Friday, June 1, 2012

Crying for Assemblyman Jim Conte

On May 10 Long Island Politics.com re-posted and then Alex Jones's Infowars re-posted an article about a heart-breaking bill put forward by one of New York's Republicans, Jim Conte (h/t Mike Marnell). Increasingly, the two party system is irrelevant because both parties have become totalitarian. Democrats advocate socialism and bonuses to rapacious public officials. Republicans like Conte advocate fascism and ever greater suppression. Conte gives us a good reason to support Gary Johnson this year.

Conte proposes to illegalize anonymous Internet posting. While I almost never post anonymously, most who have posted on my blog do. I'm not big on anonymous posting because I think people should take responsibility for their ideas. But illegalizing it? Is Conte an American? What kind of slime has the two-party system produced? What rock did Conte climb out from under?

I suspect Conte is ignorant enough not to know that the entire Federalist Papers was written anonymously under the pseudonym Publius. Anonymous opinion pieces were typically written by both the Federalist and the Jeffersonian press throughout early America. Since Republican Conte is ignorant of the basic values on which America is based, he does not know that he is attacking one of the great traditions of American freedom.

Like a good fascist, Conte uses a pretext to attack free speech: Internet bullying. That is how totalitarians have whittled away freedom since the dawn of time.

According to the Wikipedia article about the Federalist Papers:

At the time of publication, the authorship of the articles was a closely guarded secret, though astute observers guessed that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
were the likely authors. Following Hamilton's death in 1804, a list
that he drew up became public; it claimed fully two-thirds of the essays
for Hamilton, including some that seemed more likely the work of
Madison...The authors used the pseudonym "Publius," in honor of Roman consul Publius Valerius Publicola...

All of this is well-known to Americans but not to Jim Conte. Watching today's America implode through pond scum like Conte drives me to tears. In Conte's honor, I'm listening to Roy Orbison's "Crying."

1 comment:

Sadly, this is only the latest of many attacks on the Internet. While SOPA and PIPA have been defeated here in the US and ACTA looks to be dead in Europe (although President Obama did quietly sign the treaty in September 2011), there are also several other pieces of legislation to worry about.

There is H.R. 1981, also known as Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 or PCIPA for short, which would force ISPs to spy on and retain data on their users. As with Jim Conte's bill, the authoritarians supporting this bill claim it's to protect the children. This bill was sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith [R-TX21] who was also the sponsor for SOPA and needs to be voted out of office.

And then there is H.R. 3523, known as Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA for short, which has already passed the House and could be up for a vote in the Senate any day now. Obama has signaled support for this legislation. This bill would infringe on our privacy by allowing private companies to share private data with the government with immunity and without regard to any previous privacy laws. This bill was sponsored by Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers [R-MI8].

What is even more concerning is that before, we only had to defend the Internet from the tyrants of our Federal government. Now, it appears, a new front has opened up on this war and we'll be forced to defend against State busybodies as well.

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Mitchell Langbert

About Me

I have researched and written about employee benefit issues and in my previous life was a corporate benefits administrator. I am currently associate professor of business at Brooklyn College. I hold a Ph.D. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. I am working on a project involving public policy. I blog on academic and political topics.